Ken Kutaragi, known as the "father of PlayStation," shared his memories of how, in the early 90s, there was skepticism within Sony about the idea of creating a gaming console. He discussed this during a talk at the Tokyo Games Show.
According to Kutaragi, the PlayStation team faced considerable resistance both from within the company and from potential partners.
“We visited dozens, if not hundreds of companies, meeting with many game developers. Those were unforgettable moments. However, they showed no interest. We were simply told: ‘Don’t do this. There have been many companies, and none have succeeded. You will fail,’” Kutaragi recalls.
The skepticism surrounding the PlayStation project was understandable. At the time, the gaming console market was dominated by Nintendo and Sega. Although the PlayStation featured more powerful hardware compared to Genesis, SNES, or the 32X peripheral, Sega was poised to launch its new console, Saturn, almost simultaneously with the PlayStation.
The development of PlayStation began after Sony's unsuccessful attempt to partner with Nintendo to create a CD drive for the SNES. Following the breakup of this partnership, Kutaragi and his team decided to develop their own gaming system.
Despite all the obstacles, the PlayStation debuted in 1994 and fundamentally changed the gaming industry. Sony managed to establish itself as a leading company in video games, maintaining that status across four console generations.
Kutaragi is best known as the architect of the original PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3. The engineer left Sony in 2007 after the challenging launch of the third console, which initially cost Sony billions in losses.
A similar situation was experienced by Microsoft in 2001 when it entered the market with its first console, Xbox. It had to compete with the already established Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. Eventually, Sega halted its console production, leaving three main players in the market: Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft.
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